Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Thursday, September 01, 2016

Shorten The Silly Season

After over a year of reality tee vee campaigning, it could not be any clearer that the health of
critical political discourse requires much shorter campaign seasons as legitimate, even urgent, political critique is undermined when it happens in the context of
arguments over necessary choices of the best among often wrong candidates for office. The Clinton campaign is taking up what seem to me to be reactionary "tech" formulations on key economic issues -- no surprise, really, after the futurological seduction of her husband and especially Al Gore, or Obama's ed tech follies -- but writing about this simply seems a demoralizing distraction from the flabbergasting threat represented by Trump, by this moment in the white-supremacist science-denialist death-dealing GOP, by the too likely prospect of obstruction and breakdown in the face of otherwise solvable problems if Democrats fail to win back the Senate and make a real dent in the House...

“I ask Allah to deliver America to Trump,” a supporter of theIslamic State declared recently in an Arabic-language posting. . .

“He must be smoking bad hashish to say such crazy things,”one jihadist added. Supporters of ISIS say they hope Trumpwould cause the United States to self-destruct, and thatis why, as one put it, “Trump’s arrival in the White Housemust be a priority for jihadists at any cost!” . . .

“Trump is not the rough-talking, screwy, ignorant candidatethey say he is, but is actually a wise politician,” a columnistwrote in a North Korean propaganda magazine, DPRK Today. . .

“Donald Trump would be best for the job,” said the imperial wizardof the Rebel Brigade Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “. . .

The American Nazi Party’s position is a bit more complicated. . .

“Recently, the jews-media gave the Party international coverageover our last ANP radio show, where they ‘claimed’ that I ‘endorsed’Donald Trump, in another effort to ‘SMEAR’ the man,” [Rocky] Suhayda[,party chairman] wrote on the Nazi Party website. “It was atypical kosher BIG LIE, as exposed and explained in Adolf Hitler’sbook Mein Kampf — whereas they ‘CLAIM’ that Mr. Evil Nazi (me) hasembraced Donald Trump for President, hence Mr. Trump and myselfare joined at the hip, being clones of Little Hitlerites.”

So maybe Trump doesn’t have the Nazi endorsement sewn up after all.

He does have the backing of. . . Martin Shkreli, who as C.E.O. ofTuring Pharmaceuticals raised the price of a lifesaving drug bymore than 5,000 percent; Milo Yiannopoulos, recently banned fromTwitter for leading internet trolls on a misogynist and racistcampaign against Leslie Jones. . .; and Alex Jones, the talkshow host who has said that the Apollo 11 moon landing was fakedand that no children were actually injured in the Sandy Hookschool shooting.====

My grandma once said, back in 1969, that she thought the moonlanding had been faked. She was a nice old lady, but I suspectshe'd be a Trump supporter too.

> The Clinton campaign is taking up what seem to me to> be reactionary "tech" formulations on key economic issues --> no surprise, really, after the futurological seduction> of her husband and especially Al Gore, or Obama's ed tech follies. . .

Especially. . . you mean that guy who invented the internet?The internet wot might wake up one of these days and suck usall into The Matrix?

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/09/01/deliver-us-from-the-fury-of-the-cyborgs-and-grant-us-the-peace-of-cyberspace-o-lord/---------------David Brin reviews some recent books on the future of artificial intelligence[ https://omni.media/preparing-for-our-posthuman-future-of-artificial-intelligence ]He’s more optimistic than I am. For one, I think most of the AI punditsare little better than glib con men, so any survey of the literature shouldconsist mostly of culling all the garbage. No, really, please don’tbring up Kurzweil **again**. Also, any obscenely rich Silicon Valleypundit who predicts a glorious future of infinite wealth because technologycan just fuck right off.

But there’s also some stuff I agree with. People who authoritatively declarethat this is how the future will be, and that is how people will respondto it, are not actually being authoritative, because they won’t be there,but are being authoritarian. . .

The AI literature comes across as extremely silly, too. . .

Jesus. We don’t have these “intelligent machines” yet, and maynot — I think AI researchers always exaggerate the imminence oftheir breakthroughs, and the simplicity of intelligence. So thisguy is declaring that the big concern of this century, which isalready 1/6th over, is an ethical crisis in dealing with non-existententities? The comparison with religious authorities is even more apt. . .====

Ehh, this guy is just a beta-male pussy-whipped Social Justice Warrior,whose God-given testosterone-driven rational faculties have beenetiolated by Feminazi-brewed man-destroying poison.